Why is limiting the
rights and freedom of someone else considered fair when it comes in the form of
adhering toJewishlaw demands?

Since when does theTorahcome before
basic manners? How could religion be used so cynically and how come nobody
realized until now that this is a social problem, and that its connection to
religion is slim to non-existent?

How could it be that
an entire community chooses to humiliate its daughters, wives and sisters and
nobody raises a hue and cry? Who believes that one could really choose to live
a life of humiliation and exclusion?

In an
apparent about-face on a deal hammered out earlier this year among Israel’s
Interior Ministry, the Jewish Agency and the Chief Rabbinate, an Orthodox
convert whose conversion took place in New York was threatened with expulsion
from Israel, The Jewish Week has learned.

...Documents
obtained by The Jewish Week reveal that the Interior Ministry asked the Chief
Rabbinate to decide whether Sivan’s conversion — performed by a well-known
Orthodox rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue in Manhattan — met the criteria for
aliyah.

This
despite the fact that the Chief Rabbinate has no jurisdiction over immigration,
which is a civil matter.

According
to Israeli government protocols signed by the Interior Ministry earlier this
year, the ministry must consult with the Jewish Agency on whether the
converting rabbis in question are recognized authorities, and whether the
convert is considered Jewish by his or her own community in the diaspora.

Prague-born Ragachova, 37, moved to Israel a decade
ago, and in 2004 converted to Judaism in the Bnei Brak rabbinic court of Nissim
Karelitz, one of the world’s best-respected and most stringent Haredi rabbis.

...“The conversion I passed is acceptable in
every country in the world apart from Israel. It’s an absurd situation,”
Ragachova told the Forward. She complained that she has been in limbo since her
conversion due to her lack of citizenship.

Until the court first considered her
case in November, her lack of citizenship prevented her from working under the
law. The temporary injunction she obtained now allows her to work during her
case’s legal proceedings.

The
Knesset State Control Committee on Wednesday accused the Conversion Authority
of foot-dragging on conversion applications, a lack of transparency and the
implementation of unauthorized procedural guidelines.

The
committee’s ire was directed specifically at the Conversion Authority’s
committee for exceptional cases, which deals with anyone who is not a permanent
resident, such as spouses of Israelis who have married in a civil ceremony
abroad, students and those here on tourist visas.

Kaniuk wasn’t necessarily
trying to upend 60 years of Orthodox rule when he took his case to court this
past spring. At 81, he hardly seems like a revolutionary.

...The Interior Ministry turned down his request to be labeled
“without religion” in November 2010 with a Kafkaesque flourish. According to
Kaniuk, the government claimed that without a certificate of conversion, his
official religion could not be changed. Of course, there is no way to get a
certificate signifying that you have given up religion altogether.

So, Kaniuk petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court to force the
ministry to act.

Adam Frank is rabbi of the Masorti Movement's
Congregation Moreshet Yisrael in Jerusalem.

Recognition of the radical difference in Jewish
life afforded by the State of Israel - a phenomenon unknown in the world for
2,000 years - certainly qualifies as justification for a re-imagining of
halakhic conversion matters.

Such a change is necessary both for the health of
Jewish identity in Israel and for the attainment of untapped potential of
Jewish possibilities in the Jewish state.

The
Ministerial Committee for Legislation Sunday decided to support legislation
that would facilitate marriage among Jews who wish to avoid dealing with
certain Orthodox rabbinical institutions, by allowing couples to register to
marry in the rabbinical court of their choice.

After the
bill passed its second vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation,
Kirschenbaum explained that, once it is approved by the Knesset, the initiative
will bring a “revolution” in marriages that will solve many problems.

"I'm only trying to clean up the system and
provide service, but we need some transparency here," the minister said.
"A marriage certificate is not Yakov Margi's piece of paper, but a legal
document of the State of Israel."

If the
law passes, it would make registering for marriage easier, particularly for
converts. For instance, soldiers who converted through the Israel Defense
Forces rabbinate - in a conversion procedure that has been questioned and
rejected by some top religious authorities - would be able to register to be
married by moderate rabbinical authorities who accept them as Jews.

… today
when the rabbis of large cities no longer know their constituents, and many no
longer live at the addresses listed on their identity cards, it is just as
appropriate for couples to register wherever they like - near their place of
study, work, or home.

Batya
Kehana – director of the Mavoi Satum organization, which campaigns for divorce
reform, and one of the proponents of the bill – said that it was hugely
important that it be passed.

“I hope a
compromise can finally be reached between everyone,” she said. “It would help
hundreds of women who have received a ruling from the rabbinical courts that
their husbands must give them a get, but are still waiting for it.”

The
proposed amendment seeks to obligate rabbinical courts, or batei din, to hold
hearings on applying punitive sanctions to husbands who ignore the courts’ orders
to give their wives a get.

The
Technion's gym has decided to restrict entry to men only for two hours a week,
causing an uproar among students at Haifa's technological institute.

The
Technion spokesperson's office said in response, "The Technion has been
protecting the privacy of religious students at the swimming pool for years,
and this procedure is now being applied at the gym as well.

Rabbi David Golinkin, a legal scholar deciding
on questions of Jewish law who specializes on women's status issues, says there
is no halakhic justification for IDF soldiers walking out when women sing."

He will discuss the prohibition of hearing a
woman's voice in greater depth at a lecture marking the launch of his new book,
"Responsa in a Moment, Vol. II"

The lecture will take place this Wednesday at
8:15 P.M. at Moreshet Avraham Congregation in Jerusalem.

Throughout
its 12 pages, the phrase “breast cancer” never appears, only the coy euphemism
“special woman’s cancer,” which isn’t even medically accurate given the
(admittedly small) number of men who succumb to the disease.

If it
wasn’t so tragic, the irony of a booklet that aims to promote awareness of
breast cancer but is afraid to use the actual word “breast” would be funny.

...And as
for graphics, just how helpful are photographs of someone pouring a green
liquid from a test tube into a brown bottle or graphics of flowers in terms of
showing women how to check their breasts for lumps?

The index, which measures governmental
restrictions on freedom of religion and freedom from religion, ranks 195
countries. Of these, fully 52 scored zero, including Russia, Romania, India, Mexico
and Turkey. Israel has scored zero on CIRI's scale for several years now.

Rabbi
Uri Regev, president of Hiddush - For Religious Freedom and Equality:

“What
causes this shameful situation is the practice of [political parties] buying
power in exchange for capitulation to religious coercion, while ignoring the
wishes of the majority of people in both Israel and the Diaspora.”

Things
change in politics, sometimes quickly. However, there is nothing clearly on the
horizon to encourage the secular left and center that there will be a quick end
to discomforts associated with extremists among the ultra-Orthodox and
Religious Zionists.

Q: Reform Judaism long has struggled to gain a
foothold in Israel. Will it ever catch on there?

Rabbi Eric Yoffie: If we’re not a part of Israel, we move to the
margins of Jewish history. The key is Israeli Reform rabbis. When we have 100
Israeli-born and -educated rabbis, it’s going be a different country and a
different movement. Now we have 40-plus rabbis. In 10 years we’ll have 100.

Rabbi
Gilad Kariv believes Reform Judaism holds the key to reviving the moderate
center in Israel, which many commentators in recent years have noted may has
been hollowed out and lost to extremists.

A primary effort of Kariv and the Reform movement
in Israel is to use the Israeli courts to eventually recognize Reform Judaism
as an equal to Orthodox Judaism. At present, he said, some 3,000 Orthodox
rabbis are paid by the state, yet the rituals of Reform Jews are not recognized
by the state.

His goal is to have Reform rabbis also receive
salaries from the state, which would establish that they are on an equal
footing with Orthodox Judaism.

Last Monday’s Jerusalem
Post editorial asked an important question about the advertising campaign that
sparked the latest spat between Israel and American Jewry: Why did American
Jews jump to the conclusion that the young man in the most controversial ad was
Jewish?

The answer to that question
is crucial to understanding two of the major causes of disaffection with Israel
among young American Jews.

Obviously,
Israel would rather survive with the support of US Jewry and not without it (by
the way, the only real evidence pointing at declining US Jewish support for Israel
is the writings of some prominent columnists - so maybe it is not the support
for Israel that is declining but rather the influence of such writers on
American Jewry. Just a thought). Israel would improve its chances for survival
by having the backing of US Jewry. Israel should diligently work to keep having
the backing of US Jewry.

But will
Israel not survive without the support of US Jewry? – I think there’s a strong
case to be made that it’s the other way around: If American Jews cease from
supporting Israel, it is American Judaism that might not survive.

The Israeli press needs to be encouraged to
devote more attention to the Diaspora. Ultimately it is we, the consumers, that
need to press them for more extensive coverage by demanding that more attention
be paid to the subject.

Similarly, greater efforts must be made to teach
about the contemporary Jewish experience in Israeli high schools and
universities. Young Israelis need to be inculcated with a deeper appreciation
for the unbreakable bond that unites Jews everywhere.

An infectious feeling of
optimism emerged as 200 Israelis - a rare mix of young secular and Orthodox
Jews in an increasingly polarized society - gathered at Bet Gat in the Ein
Kerem neighborhood last week for the opening of Jerusalem's Secular Yeshiva.
There was a sense that a new chapter was being written in this sacred city's
rich religious history.

Meled, a
unique coed high school in downtown Jerusalem for dropouts – many of them
Anglos – from the city’s religious secondary schools, girls’ seminaries and
boys’ yeshivot, recently hired its first fund-raiser to meet the growing
challenge of serving students from observant and traditional homes who don’t
fit in traditional educational frameworks.

Jerusalem
has long been a holy city, but until now it has not had a museum devoted to one
of the central reasons that it is holy: the Bible. According to a decision by
the Knesset on November 13, a site devoted to the Bible will be built in
Jerusalem in the coming years.

A number
of “Yeshiva boys gone wild” stories have graced the Israeli media in recent
years, usually painting a picture of kids sent off by their naive parents for a
year of study in Israel that quickly becomes an exercise in nightly debauchery.

For two American Jewish female filmmakers, the spectacle represents an
opportunity to delve into how the traditional study year abroad experience in
Israel affects the lives of US Orthodox youth.

To raise money to finish the project, freelance writer Anna Wexler, 27, and
scientist and researcher Nadja Oertelt, 26, turned to the “crowd-funding” site www.Kickstarter.com on Monday, and have already received
nearly half of the $16,000 needed to hire a professional editor for the final
cut of Unorthodox.

Around
70 of Israel's 257 kibbutzim that are not explicitly religious have synagogues.
Some were built decades ago for the parents of members, the "old
folk" as they were once called. Sometimes a small kosher kitchen was built
nearby.

...Dr.
Moti Zeira, director of Oranim College's HaMidrasha Educational Center for the
Renewal of Jewish Life in Israel, ascribed the current conflict to increased
religious observance in Israel and a change in the kibbutz population.

Just 48 hours after the Mughrabi Bridge, which
leads to Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was closed over safety concerns, it has
been reopened to pedestrians on Wednesday.

Jerusalem
security forces have stationed a fire truck nearby as a safety measure as a
Jerusalem Municipality engineer declared that the structure is a public health
and fire hazard and is in danger of collapsing.

According
to Ben-Dov, the damage from the 2004 incident “in which a few stones fell” from
the Mugrabi ascent amounted to “almost nothing.” In his opinion as an
archeologist, he says, it would have taken no more than NIS 50,000 to repair
the original ramp, and there would have been no need to erect the bridge or
fundamentally change the mound.

However,
Rabinovitch, who works with the Western Wall Heritage Foundation – an
organization set up in 1988 to manage the site – rejects these claims.

...Rabinovitch
is dismayed. “We thought the temporary bridge would be there for a few months,”
he says.

But
neither can it stir a pot that could easily boil over: religious fanatics and
political hacks could use this bunch of wooden planks as a miserable excuse to
erupt into indignation over Israel’s supposed “aggression” and break out into
violence.

Thus,
under pressure from right-wing legislators, on Tuesday the Israeli cabinet
agreed to reopen the bridge, with a fire department squad placed alongside it,
and to renovate it rather than replace it.

One of the
options for the bridge’s opening is to have a permanent fire truck stationed at
the Western Wall plaza to negate the danger of a fire on the wooden structure,
which is considered extremely flammable.